Katherine loaded a carry-on suitcase with all the photos in the house of Maria. That included Maria’s baby book. She locked those in her car trunk and then sat trembling on the front steps.
‘I can’t stay here tonight,’ she said, and though he doubted the burglar would return and had already put the sliding door back in its track, Marquez said, ‘We’ll get a room.’
They didn’t drive far, checking into the Best Western in Corte Madera, and then walked across the road to the Il Fornaio restaurant where they found an open table on a small patio off the bar. They ordered drinks and as they waited a waiter brought breadsticks.
‘This happened tonight because you’ve joined this task force.’
‘It could be anybody. It may have been some nut who saw Maria’s face on TV last night as Gant’s former girlfriend.’
‘Then how did they find our house?’
Marquez didn’t have an answer or any real theory yet. He shrugged. He poured his beer into the glass and thought Katherine was overreacting. He looked at her thinking he should cancel the motel room and they should head home.
‘Are you going to say anything? Are you going to answer me or are you practicing your spy craft so you can trap Stoval?’
‘Easy, Kath.’
‘For years I’ve looked forward to the day when we wouldn’t have to think about people trying to get even with you. I’ve looked forward to a normal life like other people have. But instead of that, now you’re going to go after a monster. You haven’t even really started yet, but already things are happening. Stoval knows he’s a target and the FBI knows how dangerous he is, so they’re not sending their agents. They’re putting you out there like some hunting dog.’
‘I was brought on to a task force. There are six others who’ve been working nothing but Stoval for almost a year.’
‘Then why do they need you? And when exactly are we going to have this normal life you’ve promised me and that I’ve waited for? Is that going to be when you’re done locking up all of the people wiping out wildlife? What year should I look forward to, 2025, 2040? Or do I have to wait until the last wildlife is wiped out?’
She lowered her voice to a rushed whisper.
‘You could disappear out there, just vanish because you’ve followed him into some jungle and he knows you’re there. Then what, I sit by the phone and wait and your new FBI boss comes by and holds my hand and reassures me everything is going to be fine, that they’re going to find you? I can hear him saying they’ve got forty agents looking for you. They’re always looking for somebody and they don’t find half of them.’
Her eyes glistened with tears and she formed a fist and hit the table.
‘I’m so angry at you. This isn’t some conniving diver up on the north coast trying to poach abalone. This is a monster and you know it. You left the DEA and got away from this type of person a long time ago. Now you’re bringing the worst of the worst of human beings into our lives. How can you do that to us?’
‘We’re down to the wire with a lot of animal species-’
‘Oh, please, spare me. I’m not going to listen to this tired speech. Get over it. The animals are all going away. The earth is going to be wall to wall with humans. It’s already wall to wall and there are what, maybe three thousand wild tigers left? You do the math. Any idiot can see what’s going to happen. On top of that the seas are going to rise a meter and an area the size of West Virginia is going to vanish from the United States, not to mention what’s going to vanish from the rest of the world. This is about you and me and our lives. We don’t have forever and you can’t stop what’s happening. They’re raping places like the Galapagos Islands now for shark fin, so what chance do unprotected places have?’ She stood up. ‘I can’t do this. I can’t listen to you talk this way.’
Katherine pushed her chair back and left, and not through the front door, instead walked through the hedge surrounding the patio. He watched as she crossed the street and went into the motel. He stared out across the parking lot. When the waiter came back he ordered another beer.
‘Is your wife coming back?’
‘Not tonight.’
The waiter cleared her wine and left. He returned with the new beer and Marquez sat and listened to the freeway. He knew the odds were that Katherine was right. In the end there wouldn’t be anything left. All the real complexity and mysterious beauty of earth would be gone and replaced by the things we made. He was pushing his marriage into a bad place. She vented tonight, but she was trying to reach him. She meant everything to him and yet he was willing to do this to her. What did that say about him? Nothing good.
Yet he held her close that night and early the next morning they went home. Katherine drove into San Francisco for an early meeting as he tinkered with the slider, opening and shutting it, checking the lock, and then walking out on to the deck. Boards creaked underfoot, but it was otherwise quiet. He smelled the trees and brush downslope wet from the fog and went down the stairs and walked along the house to the corner, looking for footprints there and in the redwoods leading out to the street. He didn’t find any.
Marriage is a promise made to another and in Katherine’s anger was a plea for fairness. He heard that. He understood her frustration. He locked up the house, drove down off the mountain, and was still thinking about Katherine as he crossed into San Francisco. He was on Van Ness Street when he learned about it by turning on the radio.
Two out of three Californians depended on water from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta. So much depended on the delta pumps that damage estimates were already running in the tens of billions. The rivers feeding the delta would run to sea again until this was repaired. The judge, who two years ago ordered the pumps shut down as fish counts plummeted, wouldn’t need to issue another ruling anytime soon, and a small band of environmentalists had formed an impromptu parade down Market Street in San Francisco.
A local reporter was on the scene at the pumping stations near Tracy and she was doing her best with the information she had so far, but it was sketchy and confused and the early information got repeated and repeated. Still, you could hear in her voice that this was the big story of her career and she knew it.
‘Significant pieces of two major pumps supplying water to southern and central California have been severely damaged this morning in explosions that may be terrorist related.’
The report was live and as he worked through the different stations word seemed to be getting out that the FBI had some prior knowledge, though no one at the Bureau was commenting yet. Marquez clicked the radio back to the first station.
‘Patty, are the pumps shut down?’
‘Yes, and I’m hearing that the damage is extensive, but they don’t know how extensive yet.’
‘Was anyone hurt?’
‘Bob, we’re not hearing any reports of any injuries.’
‘Is the FBI calling this a terrorist act? Does this mean Al-Qaeda?’
‘It could mean that, Bob. We don’t know yet. We’re waiting for more information now, and at this point we can only say that whoever is behind it is endangering thousands if not millions of people.’
‘Thank you, Patty, and we’ll stay with this live throughout the day. For those of you who haven’t heard yet, terrorism reached California this morning…’
Marquez clicked the radio off, took the call from Desault.
‘Where are you?’
‘On my way in, I just heard the news.’
‘Jane Hosfleter is looking for you. You got the right island.’
‘I gave her three islands.’
‘Well, it’s the one with the apple orchards that you emphasized and she’s there now. They found a shed where he assembled what they think were very sophisticated self-propelled mines. Think missile underwater with onboard GPS guidance. The first mines blew the grills over the pumping stations and the follow-up mines blew the pumps. The Navy disarmed one that didn’t detonate and they’ve pulled it out of the water.’
Marquez called and left a message for Hosfleter. She called back fifteen minutes later and he learned more about the unexploded mine. She wanted to meet with him and she wanted to talk to Maria immediately.
‘How do I reach her?’
‘Let me see if I can get her for you. I’ll call her right now.’
Maria picked up on the first ring. ‘Jack did it,’ she said. ‘I bet they have other things planned.’
‘Did he talk about anything else?’
‘No.’
‘Call Hosfleter.’
‘OK, I will.’
Governor Schwarzenegger was on his way to the pumping stations, as was an elite Navy team of divers and dozens more FBI agents. In the San Francisco Field Office agents watched CNN in the conference room, but Marquez and Desault moved to where they could talk.
‘The design for these torpedoes probably came off the Net,’ Desault said. ‘Nowadays, you buy everything like this online. Our friend Stoval has sold US military blueprints to several countries. Through a wealthy Chinese businessman he employs a team of hackers in central Asia and another in Taiwan. You hack into the right computer and you’ll find plenty of buyers out there. Plans for the current US military helicopters got hacked into and forwarded to Taiwan, and then probably on to China. Shit is flying all around the world over the Internet.’
He shook his head.
‘This is a sophisticated terrorist event. What they found on the island is forward-thinking prototype stuff the military couldn’t figure out how to get into production. This isn’t two guys with bad teeth mixing fertilizer and diesel out back in the barn. This is money, connections, skill, training, the whole ball of wax.’
Marquez left for the delta a few minutes later. He was nowhere near a TV when the website went up. He was with Hosfleter. They heard it on a car radio, sat in the car and listened together.